Ararat whispers from Tehran

"Politicians divided countries and priests divided the church" says Father Sarkissian, head of the Armenian Apostolic Church in the heart of Tehran. It is my second visit to the Iranian capital after almost 10 years. In 2001, I was filming just outside St.Sarkis without even knowing this was an Armenian church. Now, I am sipping on bitter Lebanese coffee while Father Sarkissian tells me about his first ever visit to Turkey in 1976. He tells about their challenging journey through eastern Anatolia and those troublesome years in Turkey, only four years before the Turkish military took over a democratic government in 1980. Father Sarkissian visited his forefather's nation with a small group of young clerics. On their journey, they visited former Armenian towns and villages and came across some 'good and bad people' who offered them traditional Anatolian hospitality but there were also others who reported them to local military police with the accusation of looking after hidden Armenian gold.

I ask Father Sarkissian if he has ever been back to Turkey after the 70's. "Yes, I did!", he says and continues, "My last trip was in 2005 and I saw a very different Turkey with more democratic progress and an ever evolving civil society." Father Sarkissian and I talk about the importance of dialogue between Armenians and Turks as peace can only be achieved when people really listen to each other's stories. While he praises our documentary films "Whispering Memories & Talking Pictures", I start taking his photographs and look at beautiful religious artwork in his room. Outside his office in the garden, I also come across the small Genocide Memorial, on which carnations are laid regularly to eternalise those who lost their lives in 1915 and beyond. Above the small memorial, a giant wall painting is dominating my camera's lens; it is the portrait of Imam Khomeini, the revolutionary Shia cleric who along with millions of his followers toppled the last Iranian Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi and installed a fundamental Islamic state in Iran in 1979.

Nowadays, around 75,000 Armenians live in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Most Armenians were settled here about 400 years ago by Shah Abbas of Persia. A rather small number of Armenians surviving 1915 also arrived here and lived in Iran happily thereafter. "Persians treat us very nicely and we enjoy great cultural and religious rights in Iran" says my host Raffi Piroomian. This is the message I keep hearing from every Armenian in Tehran yet the same problems facing most Persians are also affecting them. Iran suffers on severe economic crisis, unemployment is high among the young population, the democratic development is blocked by the current government and even Christian women have to wear the hejab, the Islamic veil.

Strolling through the crowded city of Tehran, I realise how similar it is to the Turkish capital with it's 1970's architecture. The city is populated by approximately 15 million people and the giant Persian metropolis stretches from the mountainous North to its rather poor and conservative South from which the current President Ahmadinejad receives most of his votes. Yet Tehran is a city painted in variations of beautiful beige with some interesting political and social street art. Persians have a long history of beautiful illustrations, one of the Arabic alphabet's most brilliant calligraphy and other artwork.

Driving to Tehran's northern districts, giant housing complexes and skyscrapers dominate the skyline. Iran is one of the most opposed to US' global domination such as Venezuela. Most large urban construction projects such as the cities' Metro transportation network are being undertaken with partnership of Chinese companies and supplies. Towards late afternoon, the streets are filled with cars, traffic barely moves and people line up on the queue for shuttle taxis taking them home. I witness a large number of ladies in the streets who obviously just left their offices. It is a sign of what an important role women play in the Persian society. They are dressed in fashionable clothes and Western brand scarfs barely cover two thirds of their hair.powerful economies in the region; it has got immense oil and gas reserves and it established successful economic and political partnerships with Russia, China and other countries. The veil is an obligation for mostPersian ladies and their fashion style is a clear opposition to the government's dominating policies towards women's civil dress codes.

Taking a right from Vanak square, we reach Ararat Cultural Centre in the north of Tehran. Surrounded by high walls, it houses a cultural complex for various events and a series of sports facilities. The area could easily house five to six football fields. Established in 1954, it's been home to social and sports events to Tehran's large Armenian community. It is a safe haven especially for Armenian women where they can take down their veil and socialise freely. Ararat is also where Armenian youth is being educated about their history. An Iranian Armenian friend who nowadays lives in Los Angeles tells me that Ararat is the cultural centre where he learnt swimming and it is also where he became 'an Armenian'.

We walk across the football field and reach the southern tip of Ararat where Whispering Memories and Talking Pictures will be shown to an Armenian/Persian audience. This is our third screening to the Armenian diaspora and it is certainly one of the most interesting ones. I am being greeted with extraordinary warmth, hospitality and sincerity, and the event organisation is certainly the best one I've ever come across. About 400 hundred guests arrive at the screening venue among which also many Persians are present and I have the great opportunity to meet interesting personalities. One of them is the ambassador of Armenia to Tehran.

Each first encounter with a new person on my multi-cultural journeys requires a quick inquiry about the common language we could speak. I greet Ambassador Grigor Arakelyan shortly with "Barev" in Armenian and then we continue our communication in

English. However, Mr.Ambassador tries to speak with me in Turkish and I understand that he is a Turkophone. There can be various reasons why an Armenian in the diaspora speaks fluent Turkish. It can be simply because of the fact that some diaspora communities speak Turkish in their homes or some of them learn Turkish for professional reasons. Mr.Ambassador explains to me that he is an Iranian Armenian from Tabriz, where he learnt Torki, which is the Azeri spoken in Iran (a related Turkic dialect to modern Turkish). I continue the conversation with my Azerbaijani language skills, which I mastered in Baku, just across the border from Tabriz. He says that Armenians and Azeris continue good neighbourly relations in Iran. He speaks with the poetic Iranian Azeri to me and we enjoy each other's company. Our conversation finishes again by highlighting the significance of dialogue between Armenians and Turks. Ambassador Arakelyan says that politically we may not reach peace at the moment but people should definitely talk to each other.

While approximately 400 guests watch "Whispering Memories & Talking Pictures" with Persian subtitles, I take a back seat and watch the crowd. Father Sarkissian, head of Armenian Apostolic Church in Iran leans over on the table and he watches both documentaries in silence. Ambassador Arakelyan whispers to his wife occasionally and then he becomes silent again. "The story of Armenian converts in Turkey" is a new subject for Iranian Armenians yet they easily establish empathy with various elements of our documentaries. The village wedding in the Taurus mountains brings them to laughter at times yet many of them weep silently while they watch Ghazaros Kerjilian's journey to his father village in "Talking Pictures". Leaving one's homeland is a well-known theme in a community such as Iran's Armenians whose members still leave the country slowly for a new life abroad.

I greet the audience in a brief Armenian and Persian note and then continue with a short highlight about the names of both documentaries. While our first documentary whispers, the second one talks without any fear or hesitance. I try telling them that Turkey too changed in the last couple of years and sensitive

subjects such as 1915 or the story of Muslim Armenians can nowadays be told and discussed in public. Father Sarkissian delivery a rather long speech and presents a very negative portrait of Turkey; he becomes a real politician in public. He does not prefer to mention the importance of dialogue but only fosters the same old image of Turkey in the minds of the Armenian community. Some of my Armenian neighbors around the table look at him with a slight irony. I remember the bitter taste of Lebanese coffee I enjoyed that same morning and remember his lines...

"Politicians divided countries and priests divided the church", Father Sarkissian told me that same morning. With deep uncertainty about who divides who in our modern days, I get into thoughts worrying me about the chronic state of Turks and Armenians. Are we all doomed to remain loyal to our stereotypes such as 'the murderer Turk' and 'the Betrayer Armenian?' What could someone do who believes in dialogue and the establishment of individual friendships between 'enemies'. Can we start believing in each other's sorrow and truth without a single human contact and still remember what divided us at the turn of the 20th century? Are we going to stop talking about 'The Other' and start thinking about what we can do individually?..

Before my return, my dear friends Loosin, Raffi, Nairi and Sasoon take me to a beautiful "Sofrahana", an open-air restaurant where we enjoyed each other's company and talked about the event and many other things. As we people-watch and gossip about our neighbors, we discover that there is so much we do not know about each other. Our conversation changes from 1915, genocide, mass murder and politics to pop music, cinema, food, traveling and our closely related languages. I leave Tehran with an open invitation to my Armenian friends to Bolis, Istanbul and make them promise they really do so in the near future.

Mehmet Binay / Filmmaker

"Whispering Memories & Talking Pictures" co-director

25 July 2010